13636Re: [PPLetterpress] Recent Adobe issue and PPL

Expand Messages

Michael Hurley

Dec 8, 2013

0 Attachment

On Dec 8, 2013, at 1:15 PM, Harold Kyle wrote:

> Unless you were writing in TeX or raw Postscript, I doubt the non-cloud design software on your hard drive is yours anyway. Meaning, for instance, Adobe owns it and has granted you license to use it in a specific manner. Adobe will likely try to make whatever tool you bought obsolete by changing their proprietary formats anyways. Until there's a community of print designers making and freely sharing their design tools (as has happened with web design for instance) there is no way out of this cycle of dependance.

I think Adobe have finally pushed their position too hard. Before, there were at least semi-viable competing titles. These days, Quark's capabilities have fallen so far behind InDesign's capabilities they really aren't comparable software anymore. There are so many people so pissed at Adobe for this kind of thing that I think it's inevitable that there will be some new competition soon.

> Print still has a ways to go before it has open source tools that could compete with Adobe's. Boxcar had started to build its own print output software based on Ghostscript last year (results of which are on our website as the platemaking plate preview) but was unable to make a standalone RIP because there was no FOSS trapping library for spot colors...that I could find anyway.

Yes, spots are the problem. All the libraries are privately owned by for-profit entities and must be licensed. This is the problem Scribus has.
--
Michael Hurley Titivilus Press
123 North Holmes St. titiviluspress@...
Memphis, TN 38111 (901) 831-7640